Jambos and Jacarandas

I’m three weeks in to my stay at RVCV.  It’s unbelievable how quickly time flies, maybe when settling in to a new home, a new culture, a new job, and meeting 100 children/staff/volunteers who will be my companions through the next year.  Figuring out how to love, care for, provide clothing and support, yet constantly disciplining around 70 little ones is exhausting and a giant challenge to me personally (mostly the discipline part).  Simultaneously finding the time to befriend and support 5-10 volunteers, answering a million questions everyday, many of which I simply don’t know the answers to, means that by dinnertime I have no energy or patience left for anything else.  I consistently go to bed by 10pm, up at 6:30 or 7am.  There are few moments of the day I don’t feel like I should be doing something, I’m forever trying to remember which child or volunteer needed something from me, and just keeping up the strength to have a sense of humor and to take care of myself is difficult.

This all sounds negative.  To be honest, I’m overwhelmed.  But I know it will get better.  The reason I know is that just when I feel like I can’t be around another child, Boni who is 5 and wears leg braces for his bow legs, crawls into my lap and kisses my cheek.  Neema who is 16 and just went off to secondary school gives me a sea-shell necklace she made during her trip to the beach.  Ericki and Gericki, wildly energetic, boisterous, deceivingly flamboyant 9-year old twins tell me I’m cute, that they love and miss me every day.  I walk to the nearest safari lodge in the middle of the week with a group of staff and volunteers and have a drink before dinner, sitting around a fire and laughing, feeling at peace and comfortable, then being forced to accept a ride home by the askari (guards) of the lodge who were worried about us walking home in the dark where there are buffalos—appreciating this different culture where people still take care of strangers. 

Not to mention getting the news that my dear Ben will join me in Tanzania later this month!  He will work at a secondary school for a Masai village, and will be only 2-3 hours away from me…I CANNOT believe my good fortune.  I now see myself being able to stay here for a long time, to make it through a year before seeing my best friends and family, to have him attainable to see on my off days and to travel together if we can afford it. 

In short, I am happy and life is good here in TZ.  I hope to write more soon, consistently, and to show pictures of life here, it’s impossible to depict the beauty and reality of the people and landscapes in words alone.